Android rich text Mark Down

Question

I'm looking for a library or optimized examples on using Mark Down to create Rich Text.

For example, something to turn:

1 - *Bold* -> Bold

2 - _Italic_ -> Italic

Long example:

3 - _Hello_ *World* -> Hello World

And so on.

I've seen many apps use it, like Discord, Whatsapp, Skype.

I've done something similar, but I know it's not optimized and can lead to runtime errors.

Answer 1

You don't need any extra library...

Just have a look into android.text.SpannableStringBuilder...

This will allow you to get text features like:

• Make it larger
• Bold
• Underline
• Italicize
• Strike-through
• Colored
• Highlighted
• Show as superscript
• Show as subscript
• Show as a link
• Make it clickable.

Here you have an example on how to apply a Bold style on a word in a TextView :

String text = "This is an example with a Bold word...";  

// Initialize a new SpannableStringBuilder instance
SpannableStringBuilder strb = new SpannableStringBuilder(text);

// Initialize a new StyleSpan to display bold text
StyleSpan bSpan = new StyleSpan(Typeface.BOLD);

// The index where to start applying the Bold Span
int idx = text.indexOf("Bold");

strb.setSpan(
                bSpan, // Span to add
                idx, // Start of the span
                idx + 4, // End of the span 
                Spanned.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE
        );

// Display the spannable text to yourTextView
yourTextView.setText(ssBuilder);